The most disappointing aspect of this is how many people are locked out from these opportunities because they don't have or come from the family wealth to support living in a place like Santa Cruz while studying full time and TA'ing at such low wages. Something's gotta give, and only people with the means to do so can take the financial hit.
UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
101–110 of 445 posts
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#102I think this is a wake-up call for these grad students of how the real world works. > Instead of firing TAs who are standing up for a decent standard of living for themselves, UC must sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate a cost of living increase. Sitting at the negotiations table where you hold none of the cards means you are not getting the pay increase you are asking for. Striking is for workers who know…
With time, the supply of graduate students should fall. Nobody should want to accept such a deal when these folks could go work in industry and make far money than the UC system will ever pay them. Getting 50-some replacement graduates could be a challenge for UC Santa Cruz. Usually enrollment is on an annual cycle.
>"Getting 50-some replacement graduates could be a challenge for UC Santa Cruz"
It won't be. UCSC is a globally renowned research institute. One of the top public schools in the nation. Not to mention being situated in one of the most beautiful places on earth. There are literally thousands of equally talented people waiting to take these spots. As much as I sympathize with any workers' struggle, these people have no idea how privileged they truly were.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The way workers in this country are treated is god-awful, and I'm saddened by the people in this thread who are cheering the firing of these students. I'm not cheering their firing. I'm just explaining why their strike did not work out as they wished. > ask for compensation that reflects the value they bring to the organization That's not how it works in the real world. You get paid by market rate; which means if t…
> You get paid by market rate; I love how people dismiss injustice with an appeal to "the market" as if the market was a force of nature rather than a manmade and human manipulated entity. Markets are created by a handful of people and affected by laws. And supply and demand is also an man-made creation. For example, by creating laws allowing seasonal migrants, you could affect the wages of farm workers. The same thi…
> Also UC Santa Cruz is a public university. Very little chance it is going to be out-competed and put out of business.
Where do you think UC as a public institution would be if it lost political support of the faction allied with organized labor? It already doesn't have support from the opposing faction.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why was it just these 54 grad students that could t afford rent? How many grad students does the system have?
Indeed, 100% of the people affected by injustice will always go on strike. No external factors exist. The likely reason only 54 went on strike is because most grad students were afraid for their jobs, which the university has shown to be well-founded.
I could just as easily say these students went on strike because they are ideologues who were brainwashed by delusions of importance.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#105I'm an undergrad at UCSC right now and have found the entire strike to be more detrimental to their cause. They've lost so much undergrad support after disrupting a STEM midterm and shutting down campus causing us to miss the classes we have paid for. I even lost my grades last quarter as my TA was fired ( of the 54 ) and he has refused to hand them over post firing. What it has done to the undergraduates is a little…
Striking when it's convenient is worthless. Perhaps if the students weren't so entitled, they'd understand that solidarity is important and that grades should be handled. Furthermore, you have to realize the university is punishing you to turn you against the grad students... and it appears they have succeeded. If I were an ugrad there, I'd be right there with the grad students.
I was an ugrad at another UC where 2/3 of my classes were cancelled because lecturers got jobs at startups in the dotcom times, and they made a habit of not scheduling upper-div major classes frequently enough to stay full-time for the year. haha.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#106The most disappointing aspect of this is how many people are locked out from these opportunities because they don't have or come from the family wealth to support living in a place like Santa Cruz while studying full time and TA'ing at such low wages. Something's gotta give, and only people with the means to do so can take the financial hit.
It's... more complicated than that. There is an existing union that represents these people which has negotiated an existing collective bargaining agreement. This strike wasn't authorized.
Now... maybe the union cut a bad deal, maybe their representatives aren't faithfully honoring their commitment, maybe there is literal corruption involved. But what is not true is that these workers were unrepresented at the salary negotiation.
Breaking the deal like this makes negotiating the next contract harder, not easier.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s no shortage of folks being sold “key steps” to high paying jobs. Maybe their meter stick is different from yours, but taking that job as the night attendant at the hotel to move up the ranks or getting a salaried position as an assistant manager at Burger King as a path to a regional manager. Lots of folks trying to sell you a path to success.
It's not like that. If you want to be hired as a staff scientist, you need a PhD. If you have an MS you can't be a staff scientist. If you have a BS you can't be a staff scientist. The most you'd get with those degrees is Research Assistant or Technician, then you will hit a ceiling in your career unless you step away from research and step more into business. This is true in academia, government labs, and the privat…
It's like if you want to be a General, you are going to have to be a Private first. There is a progression in the sciences.
That's not how the military works at all. A Private is an enlisted rank, and their career path typically tops out at a level like Warrant Officer.
If you want to be a General, you're going to have to start as a Lieutenant (the lowest commissioned officer).
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#108There are about 1800 UCSC graduate students [1]. From this 2014-15 UCSC budget report [2] there is a very near 2:1 masters:phd graduation ratio. Assuming there are 2 years of masters students and 6 of PhD at any one time, that makes PhD students 60% of “graduate students”. Let’s make this easy by saying 1000 PhD students (if anything I imagine it’s way less than this — as I understand, monetizing masters students has been an increasing trend in American universities). The UCSC grad student union says average pay for the year is about 22k [3] (edit: this appears to be a minimum, not average, wage).
The strikers want 1.4k more per month. With the current 9 month payment system, that’s about 13k more per PhD student per year. So 1k*13k = 13mil overall to put this problem to bed.
That seems...surprisingly little? Aggravating a big chunk of your on-the-ground workers and attracting all this bad press doesn’t seem worth it. Meanwhile, there appear to be a whole lot of UCSC administrators making comfortable six figures [4].
I get that a lot of people on HN probably see the current low wages as a natural function of supply and demand in different academic disciplines. But heck, just looking at this from the point of view of the university, which is allocating resources to fight this, the calculus is odd.
[1] https://www.ucsc.edu/about/facts-figures.html
[2] https://planning.ucsc.edu/budget/reports-overviews/pdfs-imag...
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#109I'm an undergrad at UCSC right now and have found the entire strike to be more detrimental to their cause. They've lost so much undergrad support after disrupting a STEM midterm and shutting down campus causing us to miss the classes we have paid for. I even lost my grades last quarter as my TA was fired ( of the 54 ) and he has refused to hand them over post firing. What it has done to the undergraduates is a little…
Striking when it's convenient is worthless. Perhaps if the students weren't so entitled, they'd understand that solidarity is important and that grades should be handled. Furthermore, you have to realize the university is punishing you to turn you against the grad students... and it appears they have succeeded. If I were an ugrad there, I'd be right there with the grad students. I was an ugrad at another UC where 2/3…
Eh, sounds like the grad students are doing the punishing. Their cause is noble, I'm sure, right up until it interferes with my education (and thus my career path).
They need to find a way to exert leverage on the people who can satisfy their demands -- meaning the University -- and not on people who are basically innocent customers.
Re: UC Santa Cruz fires 54 grad students who were striking for higher pay
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
With time, the supply of graduate students should fall. Nobody should want to accept such a deal when these folks could go work in industry and make far money than the UC system will ever pay them. Getting 50-some replacement graduates could be a challenge for UC Santa Cruz. Usually enrollment is on an annual cycle.
>"Getting 50-some replacement graduates could be a challenge for UC Santa Cruz" It won't be. UCSC is a globally renowned research institute. One of the top public schools in the nation. Not to mention being situated in one of the most beautiful places on earth. There are literally thousands of equally talented people waiting to take these spots. As much as I sympathize with any workers' struggle, these people have no…
Getting 50-some replacements before the start of the next academic year. Everyone else is already locked into their plans for the current academic year. After that period passes, I agree with you.